Here are some brief comments by a disciple of Master Hua, Richard Josephson. A practitioner & Bhikshu for 10 years, he sees the sutra as really a practice manual. It is from his website:http://buddhadharma.com

Surangama Sutraby Richard Josephson

If you want to understand the philosophy of the Tathagatagarbha School there are better texts than the Surangama Sutra; if you want experience the Nature of Mind this is the text for you. The Surangama Sutra is first and foremost a practice text. Its aim is not to provide answers, but rather to teach us to ask the right questions. The basic thesis is that enlightenment eludes us because we don't know how to inquire properly. We approach enlightened knowledge the same way we approach any other form of knowledge; after all, how else can we approach it? We are common people whose minds are conditioned to think in a particular way. This is the way we have gained knowledge of our world and the people in it life after life, and unfortunately we know no other way of thinking. The Surangama Sutra aims to introduce us to a new way of thinking that will open doors that have been locked for many lifetimes.

The Surangama Sutra is not a text for the arm-chair bodhisattva. It is a no-holds-barred how to text for attaining self-realization. Its form is so conceptually simple that unless we put the words into actual practice we may never realize its intention. As an intellectual undertaking it is a walk in the park; the difficulty lies in its application; which can take years if not lifetimes to master. It is therefore a text more for serious practitioners than scholars.

The Surangama Sutra is a manual of meditation for all levels of understanding. If you have been meditating for decades and have considerable skill, it will do two things for you. One, it will help you go deeper. No matter what form of meditation you practice, the wisdom of the Surangama can easily be woven into it. Two, and this is very important, it can help us avoid meditative self deception, which causes us to grasp and become attached to meditative states, thereby turning wholesome states into unwholesome ones.

If you are a novice, and bewildered by a path that seems so vast as to lack an entrance, the Surangama's simplicity will bring you comfort by providing a beginning, something you can sink your teeth into and do. You can begin right away meditating correctly, what you achieve will depend entirely on your own sincerity and effort.

This particular translation of the Surangama Sutra, published by the Buddhist Text Translation Society, is the best available for several reasons. First and foremost it was done by a committee of translators, some of whom had the good fortune to listen to a multi-year daily lecture of the Sutra by the Tripitika Master Hsuan Hua, an enlightened master who until his passing was head of the Chan lineage of Chinese Buddhism and himself a master of the Sutra. Hearing the entire text, with the Master's commentary, was of great benefit to the translators, one that is passed on to us as readers. Moreover,the principle translators are themselves lifelong Buddhists and practitioners of the Sutra. One person on the committee of translators has memorized the entire Sutra. Another holds a Phd in Buddhist studies and taught Asian Philosophy for thirty years at San Francisco State University. In short, all on the committee of translators are themselves, individually, qualified to translate this Sutra, all the more so as a team working to honor the Sutra by producing a translation that accurately conveys the meaning and is therefore a reliable practice text.

ANNOUNCEMENT:The Buddhist Text Translation Society is pleased to announce that The Surangama Sutra: A New Translation ebook will be made available for free to download from July 15, 2014. Since it was published in 2009, thousands of copies have been sold around the world, and it has become our most popular English title

In order to ensure my mind never comes under the power of the self-cherishing attitude,I must obtain control over my own mind. Therefore, amongst all empowerments, the empowerment that gives me control over my mind is the best,and I have received the most profound empowerment with this teaching.-Atisha Dipamkarabrtsal ba'i bkhra drin

For over a thousand years, the Śūraṅgama Sūtra — the “Sutra of the Indestructible” has been held in great esteem in the Mahāyāna Buddhist countries of East and Southeast Asia. In China the Sutra has generally been considered as important and has been as popular as the Lotus Sūtra, the Avataṁsaka Sūtra, the Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra, the Heart Sūtra, and the Diamond Sūtra. The appeal of the Śūraṅgama Sūtra lies in the broad scope of its teachings and in the depth and clarity of its prescriptions for contemplative practice...

More specifically, the Śūraṅgama Sūtra has traditionally been regarded as a complete and practical manual for spiritual practice that will eventually lead to enlightenment. It gives instruction in the correct understanding of the Buddha-nature, which is the potential within all beings for becoming a Buddha. The Sutra explains how and why this true nature is hidden within our ordinary experience of ourselves and of the world, and it shows how we can uncover this nature and recognize that it is our own true mind.